


Give Me a Home (and preferably not a jail cell)

by PersephonesCat



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, BAMF Tim Drake, BAMF Zatanna Zatara, Case Fic Of Sorts, Detective AU, Detective John Constantine, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fake Dating, Flirting, Fluff, Hallucinations, Hot Mess Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Idiots in Love, John Constantine Being an Asshole, John Constantine Needs A Hug, John and Marinette bond over being hot messes and not knowing, Magic, Marinette is a badass, My tags are all over the place, Not Really Character Death, Oblivious John Constantine, Panic Attacks, Private Detective Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Secret Santa, Selina found him first, So much flirting, Stray Tim, Tim Drake is Catlad | Stray, Tim Is Not a Bat, Tim is a Detective, Zatanna Zatara is So Done, lots of corpses, murder investigation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28795008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephonesCat/pseuds/PersephonesCat
Summary: In which Tim is a detective and keeps finding an incredibly flirty PI snooping around crime scenes, his partner is secretly a wizard pining after his best friend, Gotham is filling with corpses, and he just really wants some coffee.The fact he spends his nights jumping around rooftops in skin-tight spandex and cat ears does definitely not help.
Relationships: John Constantine & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, John Constantine & Tim Drake, John Constantine/Zatanna Zatara, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Zatanna Zatara, Tim Drake & Zatanna Zatara, Tim Drake/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	Give Me a Home (and preferably not a jail cell)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nieri_is_a_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nieri_is_a_cat/gifts).



> Happy Christmas and New Year and birthday to my dear friend, Nieri!  
> Remember when you mentioned your ships are weird and I asked about it so you came to the conclusion I wasn't your secret santa?  
> Well. C:
> 
> Also, this is so late. In my defense, I've been waiting to post it ever since the 26th of December. It probably ruined the surprise given I'm pretty sure everyone else has already posted their fics but look! Detective AU! And Fake Dating! And Stray Tim! *pushes all of them in front of you to distract you from the date*

Cars. Distant sirens. Cold breeze. The smell of fast food and piss in the air. People yelling - _it was 8 in the morning, why did they have to yell?_ \- over the noises of the city.

If not for the corpse lying in the middle of the road and the officer throwing up in a nearby trash can, it would've been a perfectly normal Wednesday morning.

Except...

"Detective Drake!"

Tim scrunched his nose at his own name and tried to hide his face behind his cup. 'Detective' meant someone wanted him to do things. On a surface level, this was to be expected given they were on a crime scene and he was the detective on the case. Even so, any observer with the intelligence of a moderately brain dead duck would have noticed it was morning, it was cold, this was only his third cup of coffee, and he was currently practicing one of his specialties: staring at the dead body with blank eyes while sipping his coffee and waiting for the caffeine to hit.

"Detective Drake."

Tim let out a silent whimper.

"Detective Drake, ya with us?"

Grumbling, he looked up and did his best to minimize his usual early morning death-glare.

"Wonder-fucking-ful." Todd didn't even try to hide his amusement at Tim's barely conscious reaction. _Scratch whatever he just said, death-glare it was._ "Do you want to hear the details?"

"Where is Constantine?" Tim asked instead of answering. 

Officer Constantine - a blonde guy in his thirties with very little self-preservation instincts that always seemed to know too much - was the one they usually paired him with. He was one of the small handful of people at the precinct that could handle him before his third coffee. He also had a track record of pissing people off, so of course they partnered him with the detective that no one had ever seen pissed before.

Tim didn't mind people knowing too much. Hell, his entire _Thing_ was knowing too much. It was his job. He was also really good at keeping a straight face when he was pissed.

As much as he hated to admit, they worked. Somehow.

Todd shrugged. "Calling his daughter. The victim-" he gestured at the body- "is the same age as her. Theodora Klein, twenty-three years old, office worker at a large firm. No criminal record save for a parking ticket two years ago. She went missing yesterday and a few pedestrians found her earlier this morning," he said. Gesturing at the steadily growing group of civilians standing on the other side of the police barrier, he added, "They are over there."

"Constantine doesn't have any kids," Tim cut in, brows furrowed at the small crowd. People loved brutal murders in their boring lives.

Todd shrugged again. "It might've been his mom," he said, turning a page in his notebook. "Or his dog. Actually, I spaced out when he said good morning. Grayson was saying something about the 'poor guy,' though."

The urge to let out a long, exasperated groan was almost unbearable. Tim took a few gulps of coffee, hoping it would hit harder if he drank more quickly - or, at the very least, he would be more likely to choke and die before his buttcheeks froze together.

Death by coffee. It was just the way he always thought he would go.

"Morning, Sunshine," came a familiar accented voice from his left, and the amount of sarcasm in it alone was enough to have him squinting at John Fucking Constantine. Not before the man ruffled his hair, though.

(Sometimes Tim was convinced he was magic, defying all rules of physics just to mess with him. Even Selina's training wasn't enough to stop the guy from messing up his hair and clothes.)

"That is one ugly corpse," Constantine stated, watching the torn-up body with morbid curiosity. As per usual, he was ignoring the murder in Tim's eyes. "Is anything missing?"

"Not at first glance but we'll see," Todd said, considerably more chatty now that someone was willing to pay attention to him. "It looks like some kind of animal - which is obviously not a plausible theory given we are in the middle of the fucking city - but there are no bite marks and the body is more or less in one piece, just torn-up."

The three of them watched the body for a while, people working and talking around them. The unfortunate officer stopped throwing up. Food poisoning, probably, because there was no person in the Gotham PD that would bat an eye at something such as a few showing bones and internal organs.

Constantine was the one to speak up. "Like strategically placed scratch marks. A meta in Gotham?" he mused.

Todd shrugged. "Whatever it is, it's nasty. We'll know more after the labor comes back." He looked around with narrowed eyes, looking for something - or someone. "I'll go deal with Grayson before he starts baking cookies for the parents."

Then he was gone. Tim snorted a little even though Grayson was not nearly that bad, Todd just wanted some brotherly bonding over a murder case, because the Waynes were weird like that. (They were also weird in a ‘punching criminals in spandex’ kind of way, but if anyone asked - including them and _especially_ mom, - he knew nothing about that.)

Silence.

"Did you make up a daughter just to call your best friend in the middle of a crime scene instead of dealing with people?"

"I abso-bloody-lutely did."

Tim snorted again. His brain functions were starting to turn on. Shifting his gaze to the crowd, he searched the faces for anything unusual and said, "Can't we get them to leave? We'll never find the killer if the case becomes a public sensation."

"There was some kind of trouble with the flower shop. Poison Ivy has something to do with them." Constantine made a face. "We can't put the line past the front door unless we want everyone's favourite psycho plant-lover to mess up Robinson Park again because her beloved bloody shop lost customers."

"I'm pretty sure Poison Ivy isn't a psychopath," he hummed absentmindedly, still watching the crowd. He noticed the camera a moment too late. " _Fuck._ The papers are here." If the papers showed the picture of the body, they were fucked.

"What? Which one?"

"Don't look," Tim warned, turning his face and using his peripheral vision to study the person as they let the camera down. "I don't know, I don't recognize her. Young woman, around five feet one with dark hair and-... shit, she is moving."

With a look that said, _"Lose this and you'll end up just like that body over there, except much more slowly and painfully, rotting somewhere no one will ever find you,"_ he pressed his paper cup in Constantine's hand and began speed-walking towards the crowd, ignoring his partner’s confused - and somewhat offended - noises. The small woman with the camera didn't look alarmed, just watched him as if daring him to get closer. 

When Tim lifted the yellow ribbon to get through, she turned around to walk away. He cursed silently. Yelling after her did nothing.

Dodging people, he quickened his steps. Despite her size and the extra weight of the camera around her neck, the woman was still faster. Tim wasn't made for crowds. His scene was the skyline, the rooftops, air ducts, and dark alleys in skin-tight clothing and cat ears, not fighting his way through without stepping on people who completely ignored someone with a police badge asking them to move. By the time he practically fell out to the empty street, she was a good eighty feet in front of him.

He started running.

She did, too. And she was _fast_. It took him a few minutes to realize they were going towards the busier streets, most likely the main square.

He could work with that.

Smirking as the wind got stronger and caught in his coat, he took a sharp turn to the right and sped up. He knew this part of the city - _he'd known all parts of the city ever since he was twelve_ \- and there was a good chance he could get in front of her by racing through the back alleys. All he had to do was jump over a few dumpsters and climb some fences.

When he got out on the other side of the block, though, panting slightly, she was already there.

_How was she so fast?_

Not to mention she was smirking. _Smirking. At him._ He got a better look at her face - young, half-Asian, black hair in a messy ponytail, stylish clothes that didn't _look_ expensive but definitely were - before she disappeared into the morning crowd for good.

...It was a shitty day and it was only getting worse so far.


End file.
